Share YOUR Statement of Faith

[The Liturgist]

Many statements of faith are brief summaries that really ought to be expanded to reveal the implications of the summary statements that make them up. So, I am inclined to present you with something a little larger,

The ancient creeds​

• Nicene - both with the filioque and without it.
• Apostles
• Chalcedonian
• Athanasian

And the catechisms that have stood the test of time and from which I learned much of the faith​

• Catechism of the Council of Trent
• Catechism of the Catholic Church

And as a special mention a Catechism called

• The Teaching of Christ - A Catholic Catechism for Adults.

Indeed, for a Roman Catholic those are definitely the standards. And I think you will find they are fairly close to my Orthodox beliefs as well.

 

[RileyG]

The Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds pretty much sum it up for me, too.

Amen.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

I have the post copied separately. And will spend some time examining most if not all statement over the next few weeks. I am extremely weak in historical liturgical theology with the exception to the development of the Nicene Creed. However, because the witness documentation is so good for the NC, it is relatively easy to study.

First stab at historical liturgy.

My historical context: I live in a small town in Oregon. During Covid, I transferred my membership from a big city church to a small Hispanic-English church (65%-35%) three miles away. We have dual services, but once a month we have a blended service. When we say the Creed, it is said simultaneously in English and Spanish with near exact verbal cadence. It works. Even though some of the Hispanics come from an acquaintance with the RCC, most new hispanics converts do not. Hispanics have there own predispositions to worship, similar to the early slavery churches with the Negro Spiritual as centerpiece. So using The Liturgist wonderful statements of belief within worship, just will not work in my particular church.

The pastor of our church, gradually introduced for the past seven years the Lutheran Divine service, and this is the first year the hymnal and Divine Service setting IV is used. Previously, the Divine Service as printed out in the Bulletin or on Wide Screen.

Some ideas for worship from The Liturgist. The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom especially statements concerning the Christus Victor motif:

O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory? Christ is risen, and thou art cast down. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life flourisheth. Christ is risen, and there is none dead in the tombs.

Hispanics are clearly not going appreciate the full his Homily, but articulating the subject matter partially of this, I will approach the pastor for inclusion.

I have never understood the appeal of Unitarianism.

You got that right.... to include Islam. One of the great quotations of Francis Schaeffer concerning Trinitarianism is "There was love and communication before the foundation of the world." The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Spirit and the Spirit loves the Father. God is love because he can or has the ability to love. No so with Allah. He as no one to love. Just command his subjects. Therefore, Islam is a religion of pure law.

God is love and mercy. No one can predict Allah's love or hated for any created being.

As for communication, God Himself communicated within the three persons....hence his relevation to us should be no surprise. He is a communicator.

Hence my love of the Analogy of Faith: All Scripture is in agreement and will not contradict itself. It assumes the unity and harmony of teaching throughout the Bible. In other words, when multiple passages say something about a topic (either explicitly or implicitly), then what those passages say about that topic will be consistent and will not be contradictory.

More coming.

 

[The Liturgist]

Hispanics are clearly not going appreciate the full his Homily, but articulating the subject matter partially of this, I will approach the pastor for inclusion.

Well, I can assure you that in the many parishes of the Orthodox Church of America in Mexico and other Latin American countries, and in Spain and Portugal (in Portugal there is even an Orthodox Church which was for a time in communion with the Polish Orthodox Church, and its parishes in Brazil remain a ministry of the Polish Orthodox Church), the Divine Liturgy has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and other dialects, for example, I believe there is a Quechua translation for use in Peru and Bolivia among the Inca people, and this translation includes the Paschal Homily. And for the Orthodox people in Latin America and other Spanish and Portuguese speaking places, which include very large numbers of converts, the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom has become much loved.

Actually Latin America has become one of the fastest-growing mission fields for the Orthodox Church due to the extreme liberalism of many of the Roman Catholic clergy, who have become preoccupied with liberation theology and who in many cases are far more liberal than even Pope Francis, and the extremely pious Catholics of Latin America, shocked by the liturgical abuses, have turned towards the Orthodox Church. Indeed in one case in Guatemala, a bishop left the Roman Catholic Church together with his flock, and joined the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Now this all being said, my preference is that Lutheran churches primarily focus on preserving the beauty associated with the traditional Lutheran Liturgy, but since in recent years this has been enhanced by the incorporation of Orthodox aspects such as the Litany of Peace, and also since the Ukrainian Lutherans use the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and I assume they use his Paschal Homily, if you wanted to use it, the way to do it in a bilingual parish would be to use both an English and a Spanish translation. And Spanish translations of the Paschal Homily and indeed the entire Byzantine Rite liturgy are readily available, and I can find a translation for you if need that is used in the region of Latin America where your Hispanic parishioners are predominantly from, for example, if they are mostly from Mexico and Central America, I can get you the translation used by the Orthodox Church of America and the Antiochian Orthodox Church in their many Spanish-speaking parishes in those countries.

Presently, there are many bilingual Orthodox Churches where the Paschal Homily will be read, for example, in Greek and in English, or in Church Slavonic and English, or in Germany or Austria, you would hear it in Greek or Church Slavonic or Arabic or Georgian, and in German. And in the Finnish Orthodox Church, because many Finnish people speak Swedish, some services are conducted using both the Finnish and the Swedish language depending on the demographics of the parish. Likewise in Poland some liturgies use a mix of Polish and Church Slavonic. And of course nearly all liturgies of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church are at a minimum bilingual, for Coptic is extinct as a vernacular language, and only a minority of the Syriac Orthodox still speak Aramaic, so these languages are generally used alongside Arabic, which is the predominant vernacular language among the Copts and Syriac Orthodox (but the liturgy is occasionally celebrated using only Coptic, or the Classical Syriac dialect of Aramaic).

As a result, in the diapsora the liturgies are actually trilingual, with some parts being in Coptic or Syriac, some parts being in Arabic and some parts being in English, or German, or Swedish, or Dutch, or Spanish, or the prevailing vernacular language of the country where the parish is located. That said, the Coptic and Syriac Orthodox are working on cultivating fluency and literacy in Coptic and Syriac Aramaic, and plan on phasing out the Arabic language, especially in the diaspora, so in the future, as a liturgical language, Arabic will be used primarily by the Antiochian Orthodox, the Hagiopolitan Orthodox in Israel and Palestine under the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem, the monks at the Monastery of St. Catharine In Sinai, and the Melkite Greek Catholics and the Roman Catholics in the Middle East.

And this is good, because the Antiochians and Melkites have developed a beautiful variant of Byzantine Chant called Syro-Arabic Chant, which along with the Bulgarian form of Byzantine chant, is one of my two favorite forms of it (it also sounds good in English). Of course I also love the four part harmony that is used in these churches: Bulgaria uses much of the same church music as Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, unlike Serbia, which despite using the same language, Church Slavonic, has its own distinctive musical style, and also Serbians sound very different from Bulgarians when engaging in Byzantine Chant, while the Antiochian and Greek Orthodox have had some very good recent composers like Peter Michaelides and Tikey Zes. The leading choir for recording Byzantine Chant in Greek and English, Capella Romana, has also made a point of recording the music of Michaelides and Tikey Zes, and also has recorded some Finnish and Church Slavonic music. That choir, and the Chamber Choir of Kiev, are my two favorite Orthodox choirs.

 

[The Liturgist]

By the way, since it sounds like, on further reflection, that the hispanics in your parish, that it is not so much an issue of language but rather of the manner in which they are accustomed to worship, the proper thing to do in that case, that I would do if it were my parish, would be to introduce changes slowly, and also in secondary special services, for example, vespers, and also stress them in Sunday School and teach the traditional music to the youth, because whenever the liturgy must be restored, to prevent the same schism-causing effect that results when the liturgy is forcibly changed, whether for better, worse, or mere difference, since people really resent it when changes in worship are forced on them, one has to aim for a generational change. By focusing on teaching the traditional hymns to the youth, in Sunday school, this is very effective, because their parents will appreciate their singing, if you form a youth choir, and it will also make the parents more appreciative of the traditional liturgical style.

By the way, I should also point out that the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom is intended to be spoken; it is a sermon, and so the way it is normally used is that it is preached, instead of the pastor writing their own original homily for Easter. This is because Orthodox laity tend to believe, I think with some justification, that the Paschal Homily is unlikely to be improved upon. However, I would strongly doubt a Lutheran pastor, given the historic role of original sermons in Lutheranism and the excellent training Lutheran pastors undergo in liturgics, unless he was of Ukrainian origin, would want to use a sermon written by someone else, even St. John Chrysostom, especially on Easter. That said your ideas about partial use of some of the themes are very good, and I think you have an intuitive grasp of liturgics.

You might consider studying with a group I am a member of that compiles traditional, public domain liturgical resources called LiturgyWorks. We have some members who are working with us as a means of learning more about the liturgy by being exposed to historic liturgical texts and through access to our electronic library and our physical library of liturgical books and books about the liturgy, which includes a large collection of Lutheran hymnals, agendas and altar books and several Lutheran-specific works of liturgical commentary, in addition to a vast amount of material on Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican liturgics, and some material on traditional Methodist, Congregationalist and Presbyterian liturgical material that is consistent with the Patristic tradition.

One of our projects is a Lutheran Book of Common Prayer which is intended to provide a unified service book and prayer book for individual use, which will be derived from the public domain material all of the traditional Lutheran hymnals are based on (which was itself adapted from the American Book of Common Prayer in the 1860s and is called the Common Service) and which could be used by some of the smaller confessional Lutheran churches and perhaps by those parishes of the North American Lutheran Church which have broken away from the ELCA and ELCIC but which perhaps want to get rid of the “Green Hymnal”, the Lutheran Book of Worship, or in some cases may have ordered the extremely un-traditional 2006 ELCA hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, which is in my opinion more problematic than even the 1991 United Church of CHrist Book of Worship in terms of having an extremely politicized, politically correct liturgy.

 

[The Liturgist]

You got that right.... to include Islam. One of the great quotations of Francis Schaeffer concerning Trinitarianism is "There was love and communication before the foundation of the world." The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Spirit and the Spirit loves the Father. God is love because he can or has the ability to love. No so with Allah. He as no one to love. Just command his subjects. Therefore, Islam is a religion of pure law.

God is love and mercy. No one can predict Allah's love or hated for any created being.

As for communication, God Himself communicated within the three persons....hence his relevation to us should be no surprise. He is a communicator.

Hence my love of the Analogy of Faith: All Scripture is in agreement and will not contradict itself. It assumes the unity and harmony of teaching throughout the Bible. In other words, when multiple passages say something about a topic (either explicitly or implicitly), then what those passages say about that topic will be consistent and will not be contradictory.

Amen to that. That is also why I insist on the importance of Liturgical worship which is reverent, beautiful, constructed predominantly with quotes from scripture (93% of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is of Biblical origin, and the same is true of the traditional Anglican liturgy and the Roman Rite and Lutheran Rite mass, indeed, it is true of all traditional liturgies; it is only in the 20th century where people have taken to writing their own liturgical texts which are not constructed primarily from Sacred Scripture), and at the same time, it must have an emphasis that is strongly Incarnational, Christological and Trinitarian. And the historic Lutheran liturgies really excel at having a Christocentric, Incarnational and Trinitarian focus, which is why I love Confessional, Traditional and Liturgical Lutheranism.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

Well, I can assure you that in the many parishes of the Orthodox Church of America in Mexico and other Latin American countries, and in Spain and Portugal (in Portugal there is even an Orthodox Church which was for a time in communion with the Polish Orthodox Church, and its parishes in Brazil remain a ministry of the Polish Orthodox Church), the Divine Liturgy has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and other dialects, for example, I believe there is a Quechua translation for use in Peru and Bolivia among the Inca people, and this translation includes the Paschal Homily. And for the Orthodox people in Latin America and other Spanish and Portuguese speaking places, which include very large numbers of converts, the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom has become much loved.

Actually Latin America has become one of the fastest-growing mission fields for the Orthodox Church due to the extreme liberalism of many of the Roman Catholic clergy, who have become preoccupied with liberation theology and who in many cases are far more liberal than even Pope Francis, and the extremely pious Catholics of Latin America, shocked by the liturgical abuses, have turned towards the Orthodox Church. Indeed in one case in Guatemala, a bishop left the Roman Catholic Church together with his flock, and joined the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Now this all being said, my preference is that Lutheran churches primarily focus on preserving the beauty associated with the traditional Lutheran Liturgy, but since in recent years this has been enhanced by the incorporation of Orthodox aspects such as the Litany of Peace, and also since the Ukrainian Lutherans use the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and I assume they use his Paschal Homily, if you wanted to use it, the way to do it in a bilingual parish would be to use both an English and a Spanish translation. And Spanish translations of the Paschal Homily and indeed the entire Byzantine Rite liturgy are readily available, and I can find a translation for you if need that is used in the region of Latin America where your Hispanic parishioners are predominantly from, for example, if they are mostly from Mexico and Central America, I can get you the translation used by the Orthodox Church of America and the Antiochian Orthodox Church in their many Spanish-speaking parishes in those countries.

Presently, there are many bilingual Orthodox Churches where the Paschal Homily will be read, for example, in Greek and in English, or in Church Slavonic and English, or in Germany or Austria, you would hear it in Greek or Church Slavonic or Arabic or Georgian, and in German. And in the Finnish Orthodox Church, because many Finnish people speak Swedish, some services are conducted using both the Finnish and the Swedish language depending on the demographics of the parish. Likewise in Poland some liturgies use a mix of Polish and Church Slavonic. And of course nearly all liturgies of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church are at a minimum bilingual, for Coptic is extinct as a vernacular language, and only a minority of the Syriac Orthodox still speak Aramaic, so these languages are generally used alongside Arabic, which is the predominant vernacular language among the Copts and Syriac Orthodox (but the liturgy is occasionally celebrated using only Coptic, or the Classical Syriac dialect of Aramaic).

As a result, in the diapsora the liturgies are actually trilingual, with some parts being in Coptic or Syriac, some parts being in Arabic and some parts being in English, or German, or Swedish, or Dutch, or Spanish, or the prevailing vernacular language of the country where the parish is located. That said, the Coptic and Syriac Orthodox are working on cultivating fluency and literacy in Coptic and Syriac Aramaic, and plan on phasing out the Arabic language, especially in the diaspora, so in the future, as a liturgical language, Arabic will be used primarily by the Antiochian Orthodox, the Hagiopolitan Orthodox in Israel and Palestine under the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem, the monks at the Monastery of St. Catharine In Sinai, and the Melkite Greek Catholics and the Roman Catholics in the Middle East.

And this is good, because the Antiochians and Melkites have developed a beautiful variant of Byzantine Chant called Syro-Arabic Chant, which along with the Bulgarian form of Byzantine chant, is one of my two favorite forms of it (it also sounds good in English). Of course I also love the four part harmony that is used in these churches: Bulgaria uses much of the same church music as Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, unlike Serbia, which despite using the same language, Church Slavonic, has its own distinctive musical style, and also Serbians sound very different from Bulgarians when engaging in Byzantine Chant, while the Antiochian and Greek Orthodox have had some very good recent composers like Peter Michaelides and Tikey Zes. The leading choir for recording Byzantine Chant in Greek and English, Capella Romana, has also made a point of recording the music of Michaelides and Tikey Zes, and also has recorded some Finnish and Church Slavonic music. That choir, and the Chamber Choir of Kiev, are my two favorite Orthodox choirs.

Please have mercy on me. I can't in my life absorb what you are saying without intense studying...as you have yourself. I love that quotation from the movie Margin Call..."Please, speak as you might to a young child or a Golden Retriever. It wasn't brains that got me here, I can assure you that."

 

[The Liturgist]

Please have mercy on me. I can't in my life absorb what you are saying without intense studying...as you have yourself. I love that quotation from the movie Margin Call..."Please, speak as you might to a young child or a Golden Retriever. It wasn't brains that got me here, I can assure you that."

Forgive me, I did not mean to overwhelm you. Let me summarize: your idea is a good one , although the Paschal Homily is meant to be preached, and Lutheran pastors might prefer to preach a sermon they themselves wrote on Easter. The best way to introduce traditional hymns to the hispanic members is to form a youth choir and teach them to their children on Easter Sunday.

I also believe you have an intuitive grasp of liturgical theology, and would love to share my library and that of the LiturgyWorks group with you, and to tutor you in it, to the extent your time permits and my health permits, and also by the way you obviously have good taste in cinema, since Margin Call is one of my favorite recent films. I think it was also the best performance of Kevin Spacey’s career before it was destroyed as a result of his perversion becoming public knowledge.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

since Margin Call is one of my favorite recent films. I think it was also the best performance of Kevin Spacey’s career before it was destroyed as a result of his perversion becoming public knowledge.

Kevin Spacey's portrail is most beloved by all because it is fictitious. Spacey's voice of reason and ethical control doesn't exist on Wall Street. If it did, he would have fired twenty years earlier. Spacey's character stands out because he is the "wish fulfillment" of the audience after the fact of the collapse of Wall Street.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

The best way to introduce traditional hymns to the hispanic members is to form a youth choir and teach them to their children on Easter Sunday.

In my church just teaching Hispanics the traditional hymns on any Sunday is a work of God in and of itself let alone Easter/children/adults.

 

[The Liturgist]

In my church just teaching Hispanics the traditional hymns on any Sunday is a work of God in and of itself let alone Easter/children/adults.

Let me clarify, I gobbled that sentance. What I meant, is if you form a youth choir, and you teach the children traditional hymns, in order to that that choir can sing them on Easter Sunday and other special occasions like Christmas, for example, for a nativity play, which is extremely popular and something most Latinos like, that’s a way to introduce them. So actually I would suggest starting with a youth choir in order to do a service of Nine Lessons and Carols for Christmas, and then using the choir again with Pascha. And start with the basic chorales of Martin Luther and John Wesley, for example, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and Christ Our Lord is Risen Today.

 

[ViaCrucis]

This thread is old enough that my previous account, before I lost the password/email associated with it over a decade ago, is on the first page.

Since it's been revived, I'd like to reiterate I still would put forward the Ecumenical Creeds and Lutheran Confessions are my statement of faith. But that's a lot of reading.

If, gun to my head, I have to formulate a statement of faith, maybe something like this:

I believe in one God, the Father, maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen.

I believe in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father, eternally begotten of the Father, uncreated, consubstantial with the Father. True God of true God. This Christ, Lord, Son of God, and Eternal Word became human, by the power of the Holy Spirit was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary. True God by His eternal generation of the Father, and true man by His conception and birth from the Virgin Mary--God and man in perfect unity of His Person, without confusion or separation. This one Lord Jesus Christ, God-and-man, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, descended into hell, and on the third day rose again. He ascended into the heavens, seated at the right hand of the Father in glory, until the day He returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom is everlasting.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, who is Lord and Life-Giver, who with the Father and the Son is true God, worthy of all adoration. He is One with the Father and the Son, in the true unity of the Godhead. So that there are Three Divine Persons in Holy Trinity and Unity. He has spoken through the prophets of old, and has inspired the Holy Scriptures, which are the true and faithful word of God for us as contained in the Bible.

I believe in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Christian Church, which is the fellowship and communion of all God's saints; both present in the body and who have fallen asleep and are present with the Lord. This holy Christian Church confesses one Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, from which she obtains her freedom and forgiveness of sins; recognizes one baptism by which she is crucified and buried with Christ her Lord, and has but one Table where she partakes of the body and blood of her Lord as He gives Himself as true food and true drink.

I believe that I am a sinner condemned under God's righteous Law and commandments who cannot obtain for myself anything of merit before God, but must wholly trust and depend on the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, worked in me by the Holy Spirit as pure grace. So that in all things I am dependent upon God for all mercy and salvation and every good. Forgiven because of the love of God which has reached down and grabbed me and plunged me into Christ, that I should no longer live as a slave in darkness, but live in the light of God. Loving Him and loving my neighbor as myself.

I believe that this present age is temporary, and the Day will come when Christ shall return, the dead shall be raised bodily, and all must stand before the Lord and give account of the lives they lived. Where every secret work and hidden thought shall be brought into the light.

I believe that God will make all things new, right every wrong, and heal all of creation. And there will be life everlasting, even unto the countless ages of ages. Amen.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[The Liturgist]

This thread is old enough that my previous account, before I lost the password/email associated with it over a decade ago, is on the first page.

Since it's been revived, I'd like to reiterate I still would put forward the Ecumenical Creeds and Lutheran Confessions are my statement of faith. But that's a lot of reading.

If, gun to my head, I have to formulate a statement of faith, maybe something like this:

I believe in one God, the Father, maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen.

I believe in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father, eternally begotten of the Father, uncreated, consubstantial with the Father. True God of true God. This Christ, Lord, Son of God, and Eternal Word became human, by the power of the Holy Spirit was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary. True God by His eternal generation of the Father, and true man by His conception and birth from the Virgin Mary--God and man in perfect unity of His Person, without confusion or separation. This one Lord Jesus Christ, God-and-man, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, descended into hell, and on the third day rose again. He ascended into the heavens, seated at the right hand of the Father in glory, until the day He returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom is everlasting.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, who is Lord and Life-Giver, who with the Father and the Son is true God, worthy of all adoration. He is One with the Father and the Son, in the true unity of the Godhead. So that there are Three Divine Persons in Holy Trinity and Unity. He has spoken through the prophets of old, and has inspired the Holy Scriptures, which are the true and faithful word of God for us as contained in the Bible.

I believe in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Christian Church, which is the fellowship and communion of all God's saints; both present in the body and who have fallen asleep and are present with the Lord. This holy Christian Church confesses one Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, from which she obtains her freedom and forgiveness of sins; recognizes one baptism by which she is crucified and buried with Christ her Lord, and has but one Table where she partakes of the body and blood of her Lord as He gives Himself as true food and true drink.

I believe that I am a sinner condemned under God's righteous Law and commandments who cannot obtain for myself anything of merit before God, but must wholly trust and depend on the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, worked in me by the Holy Spirit as pure grace. So that in all things I am dependent upon God for all mercy and salvation and every good. Forgiven because of the love of God which has reached down and grabbed me and plunged me into Christ, that I should no longer live as a slave in darkness, but live in the light of God. Loving Him and loving my neighbor as myself.

I believe that this present age is temporary, and the Day will come when Christ shall return, the dead shall be raised bodily, and all must stand before the Lord and give account of the lives they lived. Where every secret work and hidden thought shall be brought into the light.

I believe that God will make all things new, right every wrong, and heal all of creation. And there will be life everlasting, even unto the countless ages of ages. Amen.

-CryptoLutheran

That’s very nice. The reason I revived this thread was because recently in several posts I had been discussing with friends, including I think in a thread you were active on, about the idea of constructing a statement of faith primarily from a combination of the ancient creeds, all three of which can be sung, and frequently are (indeed about 45 minutes of Bach’s Mass in B Minor is the Nicene Creed, and there is a much shorter but beautiful version of it in Church Slavonic music by the likes of Pavel Chesnokov, Alexander Grechaninov, etc, and of the Apostles’ Creed, a number of settings exist commonly heard at Anglican Choral Evensong, and there are Gregorian Chant versions of all of the above), and also ancient hymns, one which Martin Luther regarded as creedal, Te Deum Laudamus, and two others of which I regard as very confessionally useful, and then i added the Paschal Homily for good measure.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

That’s very nice. The reason I revived this thread was because recently in several posts I had been discussing with friends, including I think in a thread you were active on, about the idea of constructing a statement of faith primarily from a combination of the ancient creeds, all three of which can be sung, and frequently are (indeed about 45 minutes of Bach’s Mass in B Minor is the Nicene Creed, and there is a much shorter but beautiful version of it in Church Slavonic music by the likes of Pavel Chesnokov, Alexander Grechaninov, etc, and of the Apostles’ Creed, a number of settings exist commonly heard at Anglican Choral Evensong, and there are Gregorian Chant versions of all of the above), and also ancient hymns, one which Martin Luther regarded as creedal, Te Deum Laudamus, and two others of which I regard as very confessionally useful, and then i added the Paschal Homily for good measure.

Lutheran Service Book #954; Luther's paraphrase of the Nicen Creed. We rarely use Divine Service 5, which is based on Luther's Lieder Messe; (Choral Mass, but when we do, this takes the place of the Nicene Creed:

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

but it is extremely dangerous for Christians to reject the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Athanasian Creed, Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed collectively represent the minimal beliefs required of normal Christianity, with the Athanasian Creed providing the most detail. So under ordinary conditions, one must believe in the doctrine it contains,

Absolutely. Trinitarism absolutely matters especially in the world of progressive Christianity we have today. Modern Social Trinitarism has made mince meat out of Penal Substitutionary Atonement...believing the only way to talk about the Trinity is through human relationship analogies. So the Father is seen as the cosmic child beater (Brian Zahnd). This then leads to Tritheism as the will of the Father is different than the will of the Son....a denial of "inseparable operations" of the Trinity.

In God's wisdom the Creeds are necessary to combat at least today a intense desire to re-create a new form of Christianity upon the lastest fad. And individuals like Zahnd are the first to promote it.

Liberalism has now allowed individuals going to the seminary to create there own new systems of belief. And of course it is pick and choose theology.

Both you and I see this all the time here at CF. Like just a few days ago...... "4 POINTS TO PONDER ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF SALVATION APART FROM FAITH IN CHRIST"

You don't have Solus Christus or Solo Fides, you don't have a Christianity. Posters here can't see this. Again there is this intense need to circumvent Creedal Christianity to a new form of Christianity without restraint.

 

[Jipsah]

The Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds pretty much sum it up for me, too.

I'm with you. Haven't seen anyone come up with any better.

 

[The Liturgist]

I'm with you. Haven't seen anyone come up with any better.

Indeed, as far as creeds go writing any new creeds or modifying existing creeds is a violation of the canons of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon.

Thus the reason why I included additional canticles in my statement of faith such as Te Deum Laudamus, Ho Monogenes and Haw Nurone is to emphasize my rejection of Nestorianism and related Christological heresies, and also convey my conviction, which I believe is also yours, that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ (which Haw Nurone does very well; there are also some Eastern Orthodox communion hymns which convey the same message, but I particularly like Haw Nurone and the other hymns and metrical homilies composed by St. Jacob of Sarugh and his inspiration St. Ephrem the Syrian, the two great Classical Syrian hymnographers, who predated St. Romanos the Melodist and St. Andrew of Crete, who I would argue are their Constantinopolitan equivalents).

 

[Tigran1245]

Creed of St. Gregory of Tatev and armenian expanded Nicene Creed are most important for me.

 

[The Liturgist]

Wow! What a list. I actually read it.

Nicene Creed for me also. Also, I just love Luther's explanation of the Third Article. I think it is Luther's writing at his best.

"I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ."

I think I might post a thread and solicit additions, although I am most interested in additions from Patristic sources, not because I dislike Martin Luther; thanks to you and @MarkRohfrietsch I have become very sympathetic towards him, but rather because I want to avoid any Scholastic theology or Protestant reactions to Scholastic theology, because I believe that Scholasticism contributed substantially to the scenario that led to the schism between the Eastern and Western churches and to doctrines such as Papal Supremacy which in turn led to the Protestant Reformation and more schisms, and unfortunately the rise of the Reformed churches, especially the Zwinglians and Radical Reformation churches such as the Anabaptists, led by people who did not agree with the common-sense approach of Martin Luther and decided that everything that was Catholic had to be wrong, on that basis. I also believe that the pathway to reunion is through the Church Fathers, which I regard the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox as preserving doctrinally, but I think there has also been superb work done by some Protestant and even Catholic theologians in recent years, for example, I liked the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, memory eternal, and I like some of the work of the Danish Lutheran philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (indeed he is the only person labelled an “existentialist” who I actually do like, and I would note this label has been applied to his work, but he did not belong to the class of mid 20th century philosophers and Hippie dropout-types who self-identified as “existentialists” and agreed that being existentialist was good, but upon nothing else), and several others, for example, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, Dom Gregory Dix, Rev. Percy Dearmer, and several others.

 

[The Liturgist]

Creed of St. Gregory of Tatev and armenian expanded Nicene Creed are most important for me.

Could you share for us the Creed of St. Gregory of Tatev?